1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for memory online updating, which may be used in online updating the firmware and data of a memory of an electronic device regardless of the memory model type of the memory.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic devices typically use memories to store firmware and data. For example, a flash memory or other types of non-volatile memories may be used as a memory in an electronic device. Note that different memory model types may require different operating parameters. The operating parameters include but not limited to the access method, the command format and so on. Thus, the firmware of an electronic device is usually designed to be compatible with the memory model type of the memory used in the electronic device. The firmware itself contains the parameter information about the memory in operation thus the firmware could properly access the memory. An online upgrade method has been introduced to update the contents of the memory, by which the electronic device is connected to a host and thereby the application on the host communicates with the firmware of the electronic device to upgrade the contents, including a firmware code or data, of the memory. By the conventional online upgrade method, there is no need to disassemble the memory from the electronic device to an external programmer to upgrade the contents.
However, the design flexibility of electronic devices is limited by the aforementioned conventional technique. For example, when the memory of the electronic device is implemented by another memory model type, the conventional online upgrade is not feasible. It is because that the firmware only supports the access to the memories of the original memory model type and doesn't support the online upgrading of a memory of another memory model type. The manufacturer has to disassemble the memory from the electronic device and use an external programmer to write a new firmware compatible with the new memory model type into the memory. The new firmware must contain the parameter information about the new memory model type. The increasing number of memory model types results in an increasing number of firmware versions. It is difficult for the manufacture to manage and maintain the various firmware versions.